crack in head at camshaft bearing cap stud.... what to do???

[towns]

I was tightening down my bearing caps as the bentley describes, and i heard a crack, then saw a vertical crack on the manifold side of where the bearing cap stud is in the head...  Is my head useless now?  What can I do to fix it?  This is unfortunate because i just had the head completely redone.  :cry:

[935racer]

Your head is liekly toasted it would take a fair amount of machine work to fix this problem properly, you could try welding up the crack and re tapping the stud whole and stuff but you would still need to machine the bearing surface area and bla bla basically its toasted, I've never heard of that problem before are sure you didn't torque it down to much i think the spec is like 11-15ft lbs. Are you sure you had the caps facing the right dirrection? What kind of head is it?

[tylernt]

Maybe the stud was installed after the rebuild with a foreign substance or object in the bottom of the stud hole.

[Dr. Diesel]

bearing cap on backwards? Just about anything can be fixed for enough money these days. Maybe don't even worry about it, and don't install that cap at all. Some VW engines only had 4 cam bearings.

[towns]

luckly the crack does not interfere with any articulating surface for the cam.  I might try some JB weld over the crack, hopefully it will prevent further cracking, or i may try just leaving it out.... thanks Dr. Diesel

[Steve Landeau]

The way to prevent further cracking is to "stop drill". Not sure if it's possible where your crack is, but drilling a very small hole right at the end of the crack to relieve the stress is the way to keep it from growing.